Telling Amy
by domina tempore
Summary: The Doctor tells Amy about the ginger who came before her. Sequel to my fic "Don't, Amy".


**Doctor Who:**_ Telling Amy_

_by: domina tempore (formerly "jewel of athos")_

_Summary: The Doctor tells Amy about the ginger who came before her. Sequel to my fic "Don't, Amy". _

_Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all of its characters and locations etc. belong to their respective owners; I'm just borrowing. No copyright infringement intended! _

_Author's Note: This one is for __**CountryGrl**__, and anyone else who asked for a companion piece to "Don't, Amy". The blame…well, I place the blame on two particular Time-Lady friends of mine who shall not be named…'cos they keep talking about stuff that inspires me (you know who you are, ladies)! This turned out about 500 words longer than I originally expected, but I'm rather satisfied. 'Cept the title is sort of rubbish for the content. Ah well. I'll think of a better one eventually. ;)_

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Amy sat back with a sign, the images on the screen in front of her starting to blur in her tired eyes. She'd been at this for days now, digging through the TARDIS's databases for some reference past friends of the Doctor, looking for whoever the "she" was who he had let call him Spaceman. But so far, she'd had no luck. The closest she had come to anything useful was a file of images; a pictorial directory of everyone who had ever set foot inside the TARDIS. That had given her hope, but in the end it had been little use. It was _only_ images, not even names to go with them; and she'd been through them all twice already and found nothing in the pictures to indicate which of the hundreds of people had christened him "Spaceman".

She rubbed her cloudy eyes. But of course, this was all classic to the Doctor. He let _just_ enough information slip to be tantalizing, but not nearly enough that she could ever understand. For all the times that he slipped up on things when he was talking to her, he kept secrets much better than she'd first thought. And if it was something that he didn't want her to know, then she was never going to figure it out.

"And it looks like you want your friends kept secret," she muttered, glaring at the screen.

"And why did it take you this long to figure that out, Amelia Pond?" Amy's heart skipped a beat as she spun around to find the Doctor leaning in the doorway, watching her with dark eyes. She gasped. When had he gotten so quiet and good at sneaking?

"Oh, Doctor!"

"Oh, Pond!" he mimicked. "What are you doing?"

Amy bit her lip, shifting her body so that she was partially blocking the computer. He raised an eyebrow, clearly not amused. _Oh, fine then_. "I was curious, alright? You made such a big deal about that silly nickname thing…"

"You're still on that?"

"Of course I am!" Hadn't he figured that out about her yet? "You were so angry; I wanted to know why."

"And you wanted to know if you were going to end up in the same place one day," he stated. "You want to know if you'll be forgotten."

Amy felt herself blush. Why was it that this man could see right through her, all the time? "Will I?" she dared.

The Doctor sighed, and for a moment Amy thought that he was going to shut down again and leave her wondering. He didn't. "If I tell you about her, you have to promise me that you'll leave it alone."

"Alright." As if.

"_Promise_ me, Amy. Or you will end up exactly like her. And you…" he shook his head. "Just promise me."

"Okay, okay! I promise, goodness! What happened between the two of you that you're acting this way?"

The Doctor frowned at her, ignored her question. "Computer, show me an image file of Donna Noble."

The computer in front of Amy made an odd noise, and she turned back to it and studied the picture that it brought up. _She's ginger, too,_ she thought, _like me_. "So that's her?" she asked out loud. "The one with the nickname?"

"Yup, that's her." The Doctor's voice was heavy and sad.

"She looks a little like me."

"You look a little like her."

"Huh." She chose to ignore that for the time being; she had a bad feeling about the meaning of that statement, and she didn't like it. "Why did you let _her_ call you Spaceman? Where did that name come from?"

The Doctor smiled unexpectedly, his eyes un-focusing as he called forth a memory. "Because I'm not from Mars," he explained fondly. He completely missed her skeptical face.

"What? Oh, gosh, never mind; I don't want to know. You were good friends then with her, yeah?"

The smile fell from his face as quickly as it has surprised her. "The best," he whispered. "The very best."

"Then why did she leave?" She knew that it was the wrong question almost before she had said it, but she couldn't take it back. She had a right to know exactly what she was getting into, traveling with him this way. Any warning in advance so that she had time to plan against the inevitable. She held her ground against the Doctor's angry glare and waited expectantly.

"She didn't," he said finally. "She would never have left. She was brilliant."

_Then what happened to her?_ This time, Amy didn't ask. She could see the pain in his eyes and was afraid that she'd pushed him too far; that he'd never tell her if she asked him now. But he read her unspoken question anyways.

"Amy, let me tell you the story of Donna Noble…" Shocked, Amy didn't protest, but leaned in her seat to listen to him as he began to speak. The more that he told her, the more she pitied this woman who had had to give up everything for the Doctor; and the more she feared to share her fate.

She wasn't about to go out the same way.

_fin._

*~_|"|_~*

_A/N: The last few paragraphs are a little choppy, but overall I'm fairly pleased. Cheers! _


End file.
